February 13th was a day for celebration. Marigold weighed in a stone lighter at nine stone four, and even Patch had shed five pounds and could wriggle through the cat door again. After a frugal lunch of clear soup, fennel- and-kiwi-fruit salad, Marigold was virtuously stuffing invitations to a Save the Children Bring and Buy into envelopes, instead of white chocolates into herself, and Lysander was sitting with his muddy booted legs up on the table, trying to compose a Valentine poem to Dolly who still hadn’t forgiven him for his exploits in Palm Beach.
‘Ferdie’s brilliant at writing poems, but he’s out and I must get it in the post. What rhymes with green?’
‘Keen, mean, been, my queen, sheen,’ suggested Marigold. ‘Did you know birds choose their mates on Valentine’s Day?’ She peered out at the crowded bird-table. ‘And that in the spring the chaffinch gets a pinker breast and the blackbird a more golden beak and look at that starlin’ his feathers are all purple and green in the sunshine.’
But Lysander was looking at Marigold. Her skin was glowing pink, not dead white laced with hectic red. Her eyes, no longer bloodshot, were the same hazel as the catkins dropping their pollen on the kitchen table. There was no resemblance now to a Beryl Cook lady.
‘Sod the birds! You’re the one looking terrific,’ he said, tipping back his chair.
‘Oh, get on with you,’ said Marigold, putting two invitations into the same envelope, and blushing crimson. ‘Look at those sweet little great tits, swingin’ on that coconut.’ Then her happiness evaporated. ‘That was the coconut Larry won at the village fete last year.’
‘How d’you know so much about birds?’ asked Lysander, anxious to distract her.
‘Ay thought Ay should study wildlaife when we moved to the country. Unfortunately Larry got interested in another kaind of bird.’ That’s a sort of joke, if a very weak one, Marigold thought in surprise. Perhaps I’m beginning to laugh again.
‘How are you getting on with your poem?’ she asked. Proudly Lysander handed it across the table.
‘
‘Oh, Laysander!’ Marigold was shocked rigid. ‘Ay don’t think that’s in the raight spirit. Why don’t you pop down to The Apple Tree? They’ve got some beautiful floral cards, with such lovely sentiments inside, or even left blank to record your message. Ay weakened,’ Marigold hung her head, ‘and sent one with primroses on to Larry. Ay trayed to get it back, and nearly got my hand stuck in the letter-box. Anyway, Ay don’t think Nikki’ll let it through, she gets the kettle out for anythin’ marked prayvate and confidential.’
Lysander was so worried Marigold would get no Valentines that he rushed off to The Apple Tree and bought her the largest card in the shop, which he handed to her with a huge bunch of daffodils the next morning, so she wouldn’t get all excited and think it was from Larry.
‘Oh, that’s beautiful,’ said Marigold, deeply touched.
Inside Lysander had written:
I didn’t marry gold, she thought sadly. It’s Nikki that’s going to do that, as soon as Larry divorces me.
Seeing her face cloud over, Lysander handed her another present. More Sellotape than gift wrap, thought Marigold fondly as she broke her way in, and found a size ten pair of black-velvet shorts.
‘They’re lovely,’ she squeaked, ‘but you must be jokin’.’
‘Give it three weeks,’ said Lysander, ‘and we’ll be there.’
‘We,’ mumbled Marigold. How very nice.
‘As we can’t celebrate your great weight loss by getting pissed this evening,’ added Lysander, ‘I bought some magic mushrooms in Rutminster.’
‘Ay can’t take drugs,’ said Marigold, appalled. ‘Ay’m hoping to become a JP.’
‘It’s just a natural product,’ said Lysander airily. ‘We can make tea out of them, you’ll love it and you won’t put on an ounce.’
‘Ay’m supposed to be going to a Best-Kept Village committee.’
‘Cancel it.
‘Ay really shouldn’t,’ said Marigold. That was the third committee meeting she’d cancelled that week.
What a very sweet boy, thought Marigold. When they were jogging he helped her over stiles and caught her elbow if she slipped in the mud or on the icy roads, and he always opened doors and helped her on with her coat. He was probably doing it because he thought of her as a pathetic old wrinkly, she told herself sternly, but Larry had never done any of these things in eighteen years. And Lysander never got cross.
She loved the elegant way he draped himself over sofas and window seats, and suddenly dropped off to sleep like a puppy. And he was so appreciative of her cooking even if it was clear soup, fennel and kiwi fruit.
‘I got a tip-off about some seriously good dope, in Cathedral Lane in Rutminster of all unlikely places,’ Lysander told Marigold as they jogged up the north side of Paradise a fortnight later, ‘and this nutter pressed his face against the car window and said “Are you looking for Jesus?” I said, “No, I’m looking for No. 37.” Anyway, they’re offering an eighth of an ounce for the price of a sixteenth. If they’re discounting drugs, the recession must be biting.’
He was trying to cheer up Marigold, who, despite the beauty and incredible mildness of the day, had been thrown into black gloom by the display of crocuses on the lawn below the house. Specially planted by herself and Mr Brimscombe, it spelled out the word: CATCHITUNE in the record company’s purple-and-yellow colours.
‘It was the sort of gesture Larry adored. Ay was going to floodlight them as a surpraise, so he could see them from his helicopter when he landed on Frayday neight.’
And now bees were humming in the crocuses which were arching back their petals and thrusting forward their orange stamens to welcome the sun, if not a returning Larry.
‘Where’s Rannaldini?’ asked Lysander, as they pounded past the secretive grey abbey shrouded in its conspirator’s cowl of woods.
‘Whizzin’ round the world avoiding ex-waives and tax,’ said Marigold sourly. ‘Rannaldini plays on people’s weaknesses. He realized Larry was socially insecure. He made us go ex-directory for a start, said bein’ unlisted was the done thing. Just meant that no-one could phone us. Then he told Larry it was common to put up the name of one’s house. Ay’d just had a board carved in poker work for Larry’s birthday. Larry put it in the attic. So no-one can faind the house to drop in. Then he encouraged Larry to ’ave electric gates to keep out the public, so if people could faind the house, they couldn’t get in anyway. Phew, it’s hot.’
Marigold’s green track suit was dark with sweat.
‘Is he attractive, Rannaldini?’
‘In a horrid sort of way,’ said Marigold disapprovingly. ‘Not may taype, far too edgy makin’. Doesn’t Angel’s Reach look lovely in the sunshine?’
Stopping to rest on a mossy stile, they gazed down at the big Georgian house which was to be the future home of pop star Georgie Maguire. As well as the stone angels guarding the roof and the gates at the bottom of the drive, more angels had been clipped out of the lowering yew battlements which protected the house from the east wind. And, tossing their yellow locks, a row of weeping willows seemed about to tumble into the lake like glorious Swedish blondes racing down to bathe.
‘It’ll be lovely having another celeb in the village to vie with Hermione and Rannaldini,’ said Marigold. ‘I must make sure Georgie opens the church fete this summer to irritate Hermione. Georgie’s my best friend,’ she went on proudly. ‘She and Guy bought the house so she’d know someone near by in the country. Ay don’t know what she’ll say when she comes back from the States and fainds out Larry’s trying to chuck me out.
‘People are so competitive round here,’ sighed Marigold, breathing in the faint sweet heady smell of damp earth, burgeoning leaves and violets. ‘Rannaldini was jealous of Larry’s executive jet, so he got a bigger one. Then Larry got a Land-Rover with three telephones, so Rannaldini got a Range Rover with four.’
Below them the River Fleet lay like mother of pearl along the bottom of the valley. Black-headed gulls congregated on its banks.
‘Our grounds extend to the river,’ said Marigold, ‘so Rannaldini bought another twenty acres so he could have a mooring, too. Then Rannaldini had Hermione and God knows who else so Larry had to have Nikki.’
‘Who’s Rannaldini married to at the moment?’ asked Lysander, watching the gulls rising and resettling on the opposite bank like a snowstorm.
‘Well, his second wife, Cecilia, was an incredibly glamorous Italian soprano, but she made scenes rather than beds, and Rannaldini likes an ordered life. And not meanin’ to boast, I think he was a bit jealous that Larry’s home
